


parallel lines

by cave_canem



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, secret admirer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 05:59:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14037687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cave_canem/pseuds/cave_canem
Summary: “Hey, Lydia?” Stiles calls as Lydia opens the driver’s door. When she turns to him, he’s smiling that deep, secretive grin from the other night. It’s worth the agonizing hesitation, Lydia thinks, to see him smile like that. “Can I have the note back, please?”She didn’t even realize she was still holding it in her hand, and she looks down with a jolt. The paper is wrinkled in way it wasn’t when Stiles handed it to her. She almost doesn’t give it back, imagining for one crazy second that she could keep it both and the status quo of her relationship with Stiles at the same time.“Sure,” she says, and she hands him to paper before waving and speeding out of the school.





	parallel lines

**Author's Note:**

> the prompt for this one was: secret admirer au, and since they're best friends they tell the other all about it.

It starts with Caitlin at Danny’s Halloween black light party.

Lydia came with Allison and Isaac, saw Scott, Kira, and Stiles turn up ten minutes later, and has spent every moment since then alone. It’s half by choice and half coincidental: refusing Aiden’s advances was the plan, but watching him dance—rut?—against two other girls and feel nothing, an annoying consequence.

It’s just so predictable. Lydia isn’t even bothered by Aiden’s actions or the wish to hurt behind them; she knows that’s what he wants, because she saw him looking at her to watch her reaction. Luckily, at the time, Lydia was greeting Kira and Scott and looked appropriately busy.

Soon, however, couples pair up, as was expected, and Lydia is left suddenly alone in a way that she didn’t anticipate. After all, at parties like this one, she can always count on Stiles to be as date-less as she is right now, and thus willing to entertain her. But today he’s… not, which is almost as infuriating as the knot in her stomach when she sees him talking with Caitlin.

Lydia knows her name, just enough to know she broke up with her girlfriend a week ago and that she’s probably looking for a rebound, and that Stiles is helplessly charmed by her forward attitude.

She catches herself worrying her lip and smearing her lipstick, and turns away before she can see Caitlin lead Stiles to the outskirts of the room by the hand.

* * *

 

Lydia has never been happier about a party being interrupted; as Derek stomps his foot and scowls at the teenagers leaving his loft in haste— _you mean someone actually lives here?_ a girl asks, and squeaks when Derek turns his glare of death on her—, she catches up with her friends who all look too dishevelled and freshly kissed for her liking.

“Shame Derek came home,” Isaac remarks as they trudge across the parking lot to their cars. “Never had a good timing, this one.”

They all hum in agreement, but Kira pipes up: “You mean you know him?”

“Yeah,” Allison says, blinking. “It’s—it’s Derek. He’s our… friend?” She winces a bit at the phrasing.

“He’s a grown ass man who can’t make friends with people his age because he’s actually a grumpy hermit, so he hangs out with high schoolers,” Stiles says. “Not _that_ way,” he adds. “We have our differences, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about him.”

Kira seems perplexed anyway.

“We met through the vet clinic,” Scott explains. “His family knew my boss, Deaton. The Hales—old Beacon Hills family. Most of them died in a fire a few years ago, and Derek’s only just got back, so he knows no one.”

“That’s tragic,” Kira says. “Maybe we should have stayed, helped clean up.”

“That’s what Ethan’s here for,” Stiles assures her. “It was his idea anyway.”

“You’re horrible,” Lydia remarks as they divide to get into the cars.

By nature of things, Scott will get Kira home on his bike, Allison is taking care of Isaac, who knows where he sleeps these days anyway, so Lydia is left with carpooling with Stiles, since she didn’t come with her car.

“I’m right,” Stiles says. “Besides, I don’t see you going back to help either.”

Lydia takes an affected tone and wiggle her fingers. “And ruin my manicure?”

The car coughing to life covers Stiles’ snort, but barely.

“So did you have fun?” he asks.

Lydia hums non-comitally. She really did not, but Stiles, of all people, doesn’t need to know that. “I saw you did,” she says, mean.

It backfires, of course, because fate hasn’t been leaning Lydia’s way lately.

“Yeah.” Stiles’ face breaks into a huge grin. “Caitlin’s great. She said she’s been noticing me at school but she didn’t dare make the first move.”

“Admiring from afar?” Lydia sniffs.

“I guess, yeah.”

“Stiles, she had a girlfriend until three days ago.”

Stiles’ smile falls so fast that the knot in Lydia’s heart migrates north, pinches her heart. She unfolds the sun visor and pretends to retouch her makeup in the small mirror so she doesn’t have to look at her best friend in the driver’s seat.

Why is she so _mean_ all the time?

“I’m sorry,” she says weakly as Stiles turns into her street.

“What for?”

Stiles sounds genuinely confused enough that she turns her head, hand on the door handle. “For—what I said?”

“Oh. No, don’t worry. It’s not your fault.”

Lydia sighs and closes the door back on herself, determined not to left the car until she’s sure that she’s not the cause for yet another person’s anguish.

“I could have been more gentle,” she says. “I’m not trying to be a bad friend,” she tries again, the words pushing past her mouth like gravel rolling under her shoes. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not hurt,” Stiles assures her. “I was three minutes ago, a bit, but I guess even if Caitlin didn’t like me for my personality then she chose me as her rebound guy, and I’m shallow enough to settle for that.”

Lydia lets out a small laugh.

“Never change, Stiles,” she says on an impulse. With the same unchecked rush, she kisses his cheek and steps out of the car.

“Does that mean that I can talk to you about my heartaches?” Stiles teases through the open window. “Scott is pining after Kira too much to be any help these days.”

“Sure,” Lydia says. The words echo weirdly in her ears.

* * *

Three weeks later, the exchange hasn’t left Lydia’s mind. She can still see the boyish giddiness on Stiles’ face as he tells her about Caitlin’s lie about admiring him.

That’s her excuse, she tells herself. And—and holiday season is almost upon them, right; isn’t Christmas the best time to spread love and happiness? That’s what Hallmarks movies all seem to tell her, at least.

So she thinks about it, then chases the idea out of her mind, only for the thoughts to come crawling back when she least expects it like vermin in the pantry. She turns it around in her head until she can’t stand the inaction anymore, and stays awake at night exhausted by the physical and mental effort required by wanting to make the person she likes _smile_.

It’s such a stupid smile, too, bright and quirky like Stiles himself.

Lydia smothers her face to her pillow until she has to come up for air, and falls asleep thinking of her best friend’s face.

* * *

 She wakes up early the next morning, pillow creases all over her face, but she sits at her desk until it’s time to go, staring at a blank piece of paper. What does she want to say to Stiles?

_I wish you still liked me. I know it’s not fair, to like you back when you’ve clearly moved on. I’m not sorry, though. I like the way you look at me when I say something smart._

_I liked it when I kissed your cheek._

Her phone chimes with a text from Allison and she closes her notebook, leaving in a hurry before she does anything she might regret later.

* * *

 

English is excruciating; the course is boring, the questions asinine, and the classroom, stuffy. Stiles sits across from her, scribbling something that has nothing to do with class, shoulders slightly hunched.

Lydia flips her notebook to the end, and folds the last page in half, scratching on the paper with her thumbnail along an invisible line until it cuts noiselessly.

She smoothes the paper down, her stomach like a hot ball of nerves. Everything she comes up with sounds cliché, or too clearly like herself. She needs something simple, that will make him smile like the other day. She stares out of the window instead of listening to the teacher’s bland tone, trying to find inspiration. The only way she can approach the situation is to take it clinically, overly so: that’s how Lydia Martin proceeds.

A simple heart may not be engaging enough—what can he answer to a silent geometrical shape? She would need to hide her handwriting, but thankfully Lydia worked on her calligraphy over summer, so she knows she can do it.

Something move in the periphery of her eyes, on her right, and Lydia snaps her eyes back to Stiles, bent in two and stretched over the space between their desks to get the pen he dropped. Lydia extends her leg, rolls the pen closer to her with her foot, and hands it back to him with just the tiniest of smiles. Stiles grins at her, brightly and fleetingly, before the teacher calls for his attention.

 _I like your smile_ , she ends up writing on the paper, pretending to jot down notes on _The Scarlet Letter_. She signs “a secret admirer” at the bottom of the paper and folds it in two, tucking it back into her notebook.

Break cannot come quickly enough.

* * *

At lunch, Lydia throws one glance at her friends’ usual table and turns around, pretexting having to use to bathroom. It’s a solid lie: the bathrooms are in the same hallway as Stiles’ locker, guaranteed to be empty just long enough for Lydia to slide the paper in. Her heels have never sounded so loud on the tiles, and she has to force herself not to crumple the note in her hands. She considers slipping the paper by one of the slits in the door, but decides against at the last moment, choosing instead to clock in his combination. She hasn’t learnt it for nothing, after all.

Lydia is quick to close the door back on the little piece of paper, dropped on top of Stiles’ Chemistry book like by accident. It’s not an accident: it feels like it’s the most deliberate thing Lydia’s ever done, uncharacteristically so. She ends up going to the bathroom anyway, if only to fix her makeup like as many chips in her armor, but it doesn’t shake away the fact that she’s just dropped the chest piece. She’s handed Stiles the satin-soft end of her ribbon and she’ll keep spinning away until she’s laid bare.

* * *

 

Lydia doesn’t stick around when Stiles swings by his locker before next period, and she only meets him three hours later when the last bell has freed the students. Stiles likes to wait until most of the flow of students has trickled out of the doors, so that he’s not rushed by the lockers, so Lydia isn’t worried about not catching him. She _is_ worried about him not having opened the note before, and doing it in front of her—she’s not sure she’ll be able to control her expression.

She’s in luck: when she arrives by his locker, like she does most days after school, Stiles’ bag is still lying at his feet. Lydia can’t see his face, blocked by the locker door in which it appears Stiles is trying to get half-buried. A quick glance at her phone informs Lydia that it’s later than usual; she doesn’t hesitate to come up next to him and forces on a casual voice to tell him:

“Are you planning on sleeping here?”

Stiles jumps a mile in the air.

“Jesus.”

“You can’t _not_ have heard me.” Lydia clacks her heel against the floor. “Come on, Stilinski.”

“I was focused on something,” he retorts, indignant.

Lydia raises an eyebrow, looking as cool externally as she’s rushed in the inside. “Homework?”

“You wish. No, I just—” he looks at her under his lashes, which, really, isn’t fair. The dying light catches them just so, casting long shadows on his cheeks. “Nevermind.”

“Nevermind,” she echoes. “Like that’s ever worked on anyone. Come on, tell me”

He bites his thumb for a moment while Lydia makes a show of rolling her eyes.

“You’re noisy,” he says after a while, but fondly.

“Like you’re not.”

“I never said that. Here. I got, uh, I got a note.”

Lydia takes the paper from him slowly, pretending confusion. She feels her heart on her lips when she touches the smooth grain of the paper, unsure whether to vomit or fly.

 _I like your smile — a secret admirer_.

She notes with satisfaction that the “a”s look nothing like hers, and the foreign curve of the “d”.

“Oh,” is the only thing she can say.

“I thought—well, you know how Caitlin said she liked me from afar the other day?”

Lydia’s heart sinks in her shoes. Definitely throwing up.

“You think this is her?”

Stiles shrugs. “She would have signed it, wouldn’t she? We’re not strangers.” He winces. “Not like that. Just—why send me on her trail if she’s going to keep up the anonymity?”

“And it was a while ago,” Lydia says.

“Yeah, that. Anyway, I just thought this was nice.”

“Nice,” Lydia echoes. “You really think this is nice?”

“Why? You think it’s a prank?”

“No,” Lydia says, too quickly. “Just—I didn’t think you’d like one of these.”

Stiles closes his locker and shoulders his bag. Despite her heavy legs, Lydia manages to follow him when he turns to the parking lot.

“Everyone likes being liked, Lydia,” he says. “I think you can understand that better than me.”

It’s true. Lydia hums an answer and they split when they reach their cars, parked next to each other on the curb.

“Hey, Lydia?” Stiles calls as Lydia opens the driver’s door. When she turns to him, he’s smiling that deep, secretive grin from the other night. It’s worth the agonizing hesitation, Lydia thinks, to see him smile like that. “Can I have the note back, please?”

She didn’t even realize she was still holding it in her hand, and she looks down with a jolt. The paper is wrinkled in way it wasn’t when Stiles handed it to her. She almost doesn’t give it back, imagining for one crazy second that she could keep it both and the status quo of her relationship with Stiles at the same time.

“Sure,” she says, and she hands him to paper before waving and speeding out of the school.

* * *

 

Scott doesn’t say anything the next day, which makes Lydia believe that Stiles didn’t tell him anything. The question why plagues her for a few nights until she decides it’s not Stiles can do whatever he wants. She writes him three other notes over the span of the next ten days, trying to keep their message and timing from being influenced by their friendship. She wants to tell him how smart he is, but the only words that come are those she already gave him two weeks prior in the woods over a bear trap that still wakes her in her sleep.

She jots down little nothing instead, until one evening, frustrated by boredom and the overwhelming heaviness of being capable of feelings, she writes down the most senseless thing she can find, and firmly folds the paper over these three little words that she’s said but hasn’t meant in so long.

Lydia’s still wondering the meaning of the situation when she goes to bed. Love is supposed to be selfless, she knows, but she also knows that Lydia Martin wasn’t raised on selflessness. She isn’t sure that knows how to put someone else before herself, but she thinks that being in love with Stiles might be teaching her. She’s losing herself in the new corners of a rapidly-expanding world she thought she knew.

Allison picks up on her mood the next day, which may be the indication that Lydia is being too obvious, but Lydia’s felt agitated since the tip of her pen touched the paper the night before. She knows she’s being less subtle than usual, and in a mad decision that she inputs to sleeplessness, she slips the note in Stiles’ locker during morning break, when there are still people around roaming the hallways. The paper doesn’t stop burning a hole in her pocket from all the way across the school, though, but Lydia only has herself to blame for that.

By the time classes are over, she’s more like herself, logical and self-contained. She hasn’t seen Stiles all day; they don’t share classes on Wednesdays, and he wasn’t at lunch. Lydia quells the growing unease that it has to do with her note. He can’t know. He should know. She wants him to know.

She wants him to say it back.

But that ship has sailed, she knows that; ever since they got closer, Stiles’ crush has quieted and left room for an easy friendship, to the point where Lydia is pretty sure it’s faded into the past. It’s almost like Lydia caught feelings the same way she does a bad cold, except most of the time she doesn’t want to get cured at all.

“Hey,” she says when she sees Stiles, leaning against his locker.

His pose is looser than usual, the jiggling of his leg is almost like an afterthought, and despite the fact that he’s stuffed his hands out of view into his hoodie pockets, she knows that he got the note. He wears that smile that keeps knocking Lydia off her feet with the realization that she’s the cause of such an intimate expression. She wishes he would never stop looking at the world like that; but then again she’s quite sure she’d miss his brazen look and crooked grin.

Maybe she simply wants to be able to command one or the other on his face.

“Lydia,” Stiles says when she stops close to him—too close? He shuffles to face her, extending his hand to her, note resting on his palm like a jewel on a velvet cushion. “I like you too, you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [youaretoosmart](http://youaretoosmart.tumblr.com) on tumblr, come and chat!


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